The Georgia collegian. (Athens, Ga.) 1870-current, October 01, 1870, Image 1

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PUBLISHED 81-WEEKLY. VOLUME 11. §0? twj. The Human Face. “ The human face is a marvellous book And it opens whenever we heed ; Time hath a tale in each wrinkle and nook, Life hath its legend in every look ; And he that runneth may read. Our sunimer’s are deepening the dimple of mirth, Our winter’s the crowsfoot of care; Till years have worn threadbare the velvet of birth A”d left it a lesson of beauty’s light worth— Os promises gone to the air. The bearing of hearts that are breaking unseen The secret of closeted thought; As the hands of a watch, show the workings within, So the innermost hours of the heart and the brain May be known by the furrows without. How closely the sorrowful miniatures stand And preach to the pulses of youth ! Forever around us their voiceless command, Their mute, inexpressible warnings at hand— The passionless presence of truth." |Cdta tom [piTOmk Home™ Naples—Pompeii—Yesu vius, etc., etc. My Bear Colonel: This evening, I have set apart fur you. But. really what to write about in the midst of so much to engVoss one’s thoughts, is quite a pu?z!o. If a man's pen could have apoplexy, I am sute it would be after he had made a tour from Brussels to Naples and proposed to condense it into a letter. Berlin, Munich, Xnnspruck, Alps for three days and snow to boot— Verona, Venice, Florence, “ fair Flo rence”—ali will have to stay where they are, hundreds of miles off from this letter-sheet. And R .me can on ly have a few lines. One week, I .gave to old Rome. A second week, 1 gave to modern Rome. I saw all the great ruins. In the light of such resplendent days as 1 never dreamed could shine on this earth, and yet again “in the light that never shone on sea or shore,” the mind’s own light, I looked again and again on the long lines of the great Aqueducts, on the Coliseum, on the Palace of the Caesars, on the Pantheon and on the Caropagna.— And 1 went through the Baths, down into the Prison, into Cloaca Maxima, into the Catacombs and into other wonders innumerable. No man, I apprehend, ever saw Rome thorough ly. I did all I could, and what I did see, I saw well. Each object was smdied. 1 tried to take from each object its p.ecisc impression and, to some extent, I was successful. And now I have an idea of Rome and of her varied life, such as no books „ould have given uie. CLIMBING THE HEICHTS. ATHENS, GEORGIA, OCT. 1,1870. Modern Rome is to be chiefly seen in St. Peter's arid the Vatican. The joy I had in both, was mainly due to the idea they gave me of Michael Angelo and Raphael. There and on ly there, can their biographies be read. iThe greatest frescoes I have seon, are the Last Judgment, by Angelo, and the School of Athens, by Raphael. The former has defects, marked de fects; but in power, overwhelming power, powerof wrath, it is unmatch ed If it were the Judgment of Sin, then nine-tenths of the assailable points are set aside Mercy, none ; Pity, none; Love, none; all wrath, unveiled, unchecked, unmitigated wrath. I never before saw painted figures that looked like sculptures. Raphael in his fresco, is thoroughly satisfying His great painting, the Transfiguration, is incomparab 1 y greater than 1 expected. It can ne ver he copied. Among the statues, hundreds of which I have seen, but one power fully moved me, and that is the Dy ing Gladiator. I put this above eve ry thing in the world of Art. For expression, for force, for all that is expressible in the fact of death and for all that can only be hinted at in the idea, this work is the final form of genius in marble. And I should just as soon expect to see another Niagara or Mont Blanc as to behold its equal. But enough of this gossamer thread of criticism. I earno on to Naples last Monday. Pompeii and Vesuvius brought me, not Naples. On yesterday, I saw Pompeii. Through its silent streets, clean and well-paved ; into its houses —the private dwellings, shops, stores and villas; through its Forum, The atres, Temples, Amphitheatre; I wandered on and on until it was Pompeii living around me. Such a reality, brought up out of the grave, set in the light of the sun, re-clothed and re-vivified, no man can under stand unless by seeing it. Almost eighteen hundred years under ground, and yet it looks as if vaca ted last week. How startling it all is ! To see the very bread, the fruit, the commonest articles of daily life, the furniture—why enumerate? — Well; the bouses are generally small, most of them one story. They were not homes; at least, the home-idea as we have it, never was in Pompeii. Yet some of them are superb. 1 saw 7 floors of richly-wrought mosaics, halls laid in marble, grottoes of shell work, marble tables, such as no mo-> ney could now purchase. From the shining pavements and beautiful frescoes of Pompeii, from those magnificent altars, from the shrine of the oracles, from the Urns and the Tombs, I often turned my eyes to Vesuvius. The white smoke rose in wreathing grace and lay above the cone, and all along its sides, the soft lines of beauty waved. And such beauty ! No mountain has a more perfect form. Imagine a mountain clad in velvet, the air gent ly ruffling it, the sunshine streaming down it, the eye absolutely reposing upon it in the stillness of slumber aod yet thrillingly wakeful; and then perchance you may have some image ofVe.-uvius. I would give up any view in the woild for Vesuvius. And then, at night, the glowing streams of lava—the huge, black mass and theso streaking lines like long auro ras—this 1 have seen again and again. Oh, me! if lam not wiser, belter, humbler, gladder, nobler for all this, what a sad, sad memory it will be ! Frank has been wiih me all the route from Berlin. And he has en tered into the soul of every thing and enjoyed it to the full boundary of feeling. In a day or two, we start for Berlin. My thr< at has been very bad.— Within those last ten days, it has given me much pain. In this re spect, and only in this, the trip has disappointed me. I am somewhat better here. My general health is much improved. So far as I can judge, a visit to Europe cannot be exaggerated, if one will come here to learn. Os this I am fully satisfied, that it gives a spe cies of culture not otherwise attaina hie. But a man mast prepare him l * self for it. And when he reaches Europe, let him control his curiosity and only indulge in sight-seeing as an exceptional recreation. Italy has far surpassed my expec tations in all respects. But lam too feeble to write more to night. How I have longed to hear from you! No letter yet. But you will not forget me—this, I know. My heart yearns for home and Athens. 1 have seen enough, enough. The Alps, Rome, Pompeii, Vesuvius; what else is there? As ever, yours, as now, A A. L. Col. W. L. Mitchell. ...A gentleman the other day in lending a book to a friend, cautioned him to bo punctual in returning it. This said he, in apology, is really ne cessary, for though 1 And some of my friends bad arithmeticians , yet most of them are good book keepers. TERMS---#2.50 PER ANNUM. NUMBER 4. femt#. For the Georgia Collegian. Mottoes: For instance, “ Magna servitus est inagna fortuna ” quod una est “ magnas inter opes fortuna ” —“ A great fortune is a great slavery, for one is poor inthe midst of wealth.” “ Nothing truer under the sun,” yet out of ten thousand times ten thousand people, you will not get one to believe it. It is a perfect paradox —“an assertion apparently false or absurd, but not really so.” No ! for we have already said, there is noth ing truer under the sun—which we sincerely believe, for it admits of a demonstration as clear as a Freeh’s TONS ASSINORUM. What is freedom ? Liberty, privi leges, license. Now,J heard a Yan kee soldier say on the beautiful banks of the Oconee, (for it is beautiful, on ly nobody has time, liberty', to see it,) in a conversation upon Northern and Southern agriculture, under the eha* dow of a picturesque mill near the armory, that was—“ Sir, a man who owns a three hundred acre farm in the State of Pennsylvania, has’nt time to go to a circus; no damn it, not if he wanted to.” Wby? “Be cause he is a slave to the farm, and his absence fora day would cost him more than forty circuses; he can’t afford it.” How was it my friend, with you ? “Oh ! I could always go, because lam a day laborer. I lost half a day’s work, and paid half a day’s wages, but I could afford that; it was only one day lost; so with his three hundred acres of land, he has not half my liberty nor half my fun ; no, sir, I would not own three hnn* dred acres of land in the State of Pennsylvania—not if you gave it to me—l mean if I had to live on it.” I state this conversation as accu rately as 1 can remember it, and as a fact. I was a miller then, covered with flour from heel to head, sitting cheek byrjowl on a rough bench with a Yankee soldier, who had not only licked me, and taken all of my prop* erty, but was now teaching me the purest philosophy, most generously ; and I behanged if I did’nt believe the fellow was right, by my own expe rience and from facts diawn from the experience of others. Reflections are odius — sed, John Jacobs sits up every night of his life until twelve or one o’clock, laboring like a slave, harder than any of his clerks, if he has any, with a head cracked with the weightof gold; gol den metalic thoughts of “cent^per*